It's the Exmoor rush-hour and the air is full of noise. Every coombe, hillside and spinney reverberates with the booming din of engines, and yet there's not a soul in sight. Why? Because this is one of the most exclusive rush-hours in the world.

It happens around about the time I go out with my lurcher towards the end of the afternoon at this time of year. And if you think I'm going mad ranting on about some phantom rush-hour, I'll give you a clue to the riddle. Before the air fills with the roar of engines it has been punctuated by the occasional rat-a-tat of gunfire.

This area boasts some of the best sporting shoots in Europe – the hills are big and the slopes are steep which means the feathered targets fly out across the guns at an impressive altitude, which apparently is the Holy Grail of those who like to pull triggers.

My rush-hour din is the sound of executive helicopters leaving at the end of a day's shooting, taking cargoes of people like bankers back to London. Yesterday no fewer than four of these expensive machines were climbing up and out of the coombes.

I'm not talking about the tiny helicopters so beloved by local businessmen who've made good. These are massive machines with retractable undercarriages that will have you back at Battersea Helipad in a jiffy.

A new Sikorsky s-76 will knock you back just under £10 million. Worth every penny according to the advert, because it helps you avoid all that awful traffic. £10 million? Even Lloyds chief executive Eric Daniels would have to save a few bonuses for one of these.

But why purchase when you can charter? I don't know what a day out in a Sikorsky s-76 would cost because the charter companies will only give tailor-made quotes to bona-fide individuals who obviously have sufficient means (not nosey journalists who can barely afford the Airfix model version) but the set rate for the five minute trip from Heathrow to Battersea Helipad is around £2,500.

The people up there in our local rush-hour are beings from another world. They're like gods. They don't get their feet dirty. They don't queue. In fact they probably don't ever do anything that's inconvenient to them, except perhaps go to the loo.

They're up there in the clouds making decisions that trickle down to affect us all. Like squeezing the hell out of the companies we work for, like streamlining corporations until there's no blood left to drip, like causing recessions through rampant all-embracing greed.

Talk of yet another round of obscene bankers' bonuses this week has caused me to spew forth bile once again. "These people create wealth," said one of their idealistically bankrupt defenders on the radio. No they don't. They take it. And keep great chunks of it for themselves. No banker ever created anything. His job is to apply and administer financial mechanisms that, while facilitating others, are primarily designed to enrich him and his shareholders.

If he does help create this magical thing called "growth" which economists talk about, it is growth in the value of companies and in profits. Which doesn't mean much to pheasant beaters, journalists and other mere mortals. It certainly doesn't mean growth in the quality of services offered, or in jobs.

Let's take something no banker would ever be seen dead in as an example: are trains and the service they offer better today than they were, say, 50 years ago? Definitely not. Yes, there are more train companies making more profits – but there are fewer trains offering fewer services creating more queues.

OK, perhaps rich people like bankers do create a few jobs. There's no doubt, for example, that country shoots bring much needed dosh out into the sticks.

Fancy a career waving an empty fertiliser sack and hollering to frighten a few birds? Being a beater is probably okay, every now and again – but I'm not sure the job is part of the desired socio-economic model we want for the future of rural Britain. The new Exmoor rush-hour harks back to a Britain of centuries ago: the grinning peasants are there waving in the mud glad to earn a few pennies, while a handful of rich folk have had their rural fun and are back off to London as quick as their carriages will take them.